Hi , I accidentally set Users deny permission on my system drive (C drive). Now I can't access c drive even use administrator login. I tried ake ownership and other action, but all give me "Can't open access control editor. Access is denied". How can I recover permission to default or change back?? Thanks for any help offered.

can you access computer management from another computer to the computer with the problem? if so, you can try the following: change in local users and groups the users members, remove authenticated users. after that, admin is no longer in the users group and shouldnt be affected by the deny anymore

Try launching cmd as the System Account using PSexe. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897553.aspx From here you should be able to modify the ACL on the %systemroot% location with a tool like xcalcs or calcs and add the ACE's as needed.

Thank you for reply, Unfortunately I can't access management from another pc because this server is stand alone. And no AD installed, just local user setting. anyway to reset ntfs permission?? thanks

I appreciate if you can tell me how to modify it. Can I use this tool to remove administartor from Users group?? Thanks

Hi pzhang, what i thought you might like to boot system into PE with PE disk and then use "takeown" command to take ownership of this partition. or try get some Linux based utility disk to boot system and take the ownership. http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vistasecurity/thread/aa50a319-4134-438d-9cd5-4a39e70decd8 Yin

pzhang, did you have any success in trying the process I mentioned, to use the System account to restore the ACE's on the %systemroot%?